After Travelling Through The Corn-Fields Of Pembera Pereh We Emerged Upon A Broad Flat Plain, As Level As The Still Surface Of A Pond, Whence The Salt Of The Wagogo Is Obtained.

From Kanyenyi on the southern road, to beyond the confines of Uhumba and Ubanarama, this saline field extends, containing many large ponds of salt bitter water whose low banks are covered with an effervescence partaking of the nature of nitrate.

Subsequently, two days afterwards, having ascended the elevated ridge which separates Ugogo from Uyanzi, I obtained a view of this immense saline plain, embracing over a hundred square miles. I may have been deceived, but I imagined I saw large expanses of greyish-blue water, which causes me to believe that this salina is but a corner of a great salt lake. The Wahumba, who are numerous, from Nyambwa to the Uyanzi border, informed my soldiers that there was a "Maji Kuba" away to the north.

Mizanza, our next camp after Nyambwa, is situated in a grove of palms, about thirteen miles from the latter place. Soon after arriving I had to bury myself under blankets, plagued with the same intermittent fever which first attacked me during the transit of Marenga Mkali. Feeling certain that one day's halt, which would enable me to take regular doses of the invaluable sulphate of quinine, would cure me, I requested Sheikh Thani to tell Hamed to halt on the morrow, as I should be utterly unable to continue thus long, under repeated attacks of a virulent disease which was fast reducing me into a mere frame of skin and bone. Hamed, in a hurry to arrive at Unyanyembe in order to dispose of his cloth before other caravans appeared in the market, replied at first that he would not, that he could not, stop for the Musungu. Upon Thani's reporting his answer to me, I requested him to inform Hamed that, as the Musungu did not wish to detain him, or any other caravan, it was his express wish that Hamed would march and leave him, as he was quite strong enough in guns to march through Ugogo alone. Whatever cause modified the Sheikh's resolution and his anxiety to depart, Hamed's horn signal for the march was not heard that night, and on the morrow he had not gone.

Early in the morning I commenced on my quinine doses; at 6 A.M. I took a second dose; before noon I had taken four more - altogether, fifty measured grains-the effect of which was manifest in the copious perspiration which drenched flannels, linen, and blankets. After noon I arose, devoutly thankful that the disease which had clung to me for the last fourteen days had at last succumbed to quinine.

On this day the lofty tent, and the American flag which ever flew from the centre pole, attracted the Sultan of Mizanza towards it, and was the cause of a visit with which he honoured me. As he was notorious among the Arabs for having assisted Manwa Sera in his war against Sheikh Sny bin Amer, high eulogies upon whom have been written by Burton, and subsequently by Speke, and as he was the second most powerful chief in Ugogo, of course he was quite a curiosity to me. As the tent-door was uplifted that he might enter, the ancient gentleman was so struck with astonishment at the lofty apex, and internal arrangements, that the greasy Barsati cloth which formed his sole and only protection against the chills of night and the heat of noon, in a fit of abstraction was permitted to fall down to his feet, exposing to the Musungu's unhallowed gaze the sad and aged wreck of what must once have been a towering form. His son, a youth of about fifteen, attentive to the infirmities of his father, hastened with filial duty to remind him of his condition, upon which, with an idiotic titter at the incident, he resumed his scanty apparel and sat down to wonder and gibber out his admiration at the tent and the strange things which formed the Musungu's personal baggage and furniture. After gazing in stupid wonder at the table, on which was placed some crockery and the few books I carried with me; at the slung hammock, which he believed was suspended by some magical contrivance; at the portmanteaus which contained my stock of clothes, he ejaculated, "Hi-le! the Musungu is a great sultan, who has come from his country to see Ugogo." He then noticed me, and was again wonder- struck at my pale complexion and straight hair, and the question now propounded was, "How on earth was I white when the sun had burned his people's skins into blackness?" Whereupon he was shown my cork topee, which he tried on his woolly head, much to his own and to our amusement. The guns were next shown to him; the wonderful repeating rifle of the Winchester Company, which was fired thirteen times in rapid succession to demonstrate its remarkable murderous powers. If he was astonished before he was a thousand times more so now, and expressed his belief that the Wagogo could not stand before the Musungu in battle, for wherever a Mgogo was seen such a gun would surely kill him. Then the other firearms were brought forth, each with its peculiar mechanism explained, until, in, a burst of enthusiasm at my riches and power, he said he would send me a sheep or goat, and that he would be my brother. I thanked him for the honour, and promised to accept whatever he was pleased to send me. At the instigation of Sheikh Thani, who acted as interpreter, who said that Wagogo chiefs must not depart with empty hands, I cut off a shukka of Kaniki and presented it to him, which, after being examined and measured, was refused upon the ground that, the Musungu being a great sultan should not demean himself so much as to give him only a shukka.

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